Michigan Supreme Court Justice says state highest court is committed to strict interpretation of law

Michigan Supreme Court Justice says state's highest court is committed to strict interpretation of law

By Fred Gray, News-Review staff writer Wednesday, July 6, 2005 11:53 AM EDT Corrigan

Michigan Supreme Court Justice Maura Corrigan says the majority on the high court has been committed to "textualism," or the application of the objective meaning of the actual words of the statute or constitution, since 1999, when for the first time in 50 years justices nominated by the Republican Party became the majority of the court.

"Fundamentally, a majority of the court believes a court's role is to interpret the law, not to make it," said Corrigan, who was elected to the court in 1998, served as chief justice from 2001 to 2004 and continues to serve as one of the court's seven justices.

Corrigan told the 7th Annual Joint Conference of the Michigan Association of Municipal Attorneys/Public Corporation Law section on Mackinac Island recently that despite the state constitutional mandate that the high court justices be nominated by political parties, the real differences and debates within the court relate to philosophy.

She said textualism runs counter to the "dynamic" approach to interpretation, in which judges go behind the actual words of the statute and divine what they think are the true intentions of the Legislature.

"To me, such an approach is the opposite of the constitutional scheme our founders put in place," she said.

"Advocates of this dynamic approach call to mind Plato's Republic, his treatise on the ideal state. To put it mildly, the platonic state was not a democracy. The people were to take their orders from enlightened philosopher-kings, who would give their followers constant and detailed direction," she said.

She said a society run by philosopher kings may be "terribly efficient" but not one that would be considered a democracy.

"No doubt, Iraq was in some respects a terribly efficient place before the ouster of Saddam Hussein. No one, but no one, doubted who was running the show," she said.

"And we know that his orders were backed up in the most brutal ways imaginable. But Iraq was not a democracy. It was not a place where individual freedom could flourish. And neither is the world of the philosopher-kings a democracy or one that values freedom."

"This is my concern with the philosophy of judicial activists, because an activist approach rests on an anti-democratic premise. The thinking is that judges just know better - that we are somehow smarter and wiser than the people we govern and serve - that we on the bench are the new philosopher-kings."

She said the justices face a constant temptation to be expedient and fix what appears to be wrong because he or she knows better.

"I don't think I was elected to this job to be a philosopher-king. The people of Michigan didn't elect me because I am an outstanding ethicist or an expert on public policy. Indeed, if I had any pretense of expertise, that notion would certainly be drummed out of me around our conference table.

"Applying the objective meaning of the text of the law, is the best protection the law - and our democracy - has against the tyranny of philosopher-kings, or, what is more often the case, the efforts of well-meaning but human and fallible jurists."

Her official Bio.

Justice Maura Corrigan was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court in 1998 and served two terms as Chief Justice from 2001-2004.

She graduated from Marygrove College in 1969 and from the University of Detroit Law School in 1973. She next worked as a law clerk to Michigan Court of Appeals Judge John Gillis and as a Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor. In 1979, she became an Assistant United States Attorney, serving as Chief of Appeals and later Chief Assistant United States Attorney. In 1989, Justice Corrigan became a partner at Plunkett & Cooney, a venerable Detroit law firm. In 1992, Governor John Engler appointed her to the Michigan Court of Appeals. She was twice elected to that court and was appointed as its Chief Judge from 1997-1998 until her election to the Supreme Court.

Justice Corrigan participates in numerous community and professional activities. Currently, she is President of the American Inns of Court at MSU Law School and holds memberships on the Boards of the International Center for Healing and the Law of the Fetzer Institute, Vista Maria, and the Pew Commission investigating foster care issues in the U.S. She recently completed a term as vice-president of the Conference of Chief Justices and co-chaired the Conference of Chief Justices Problem Solving Courts Committee. Justice Corrigan was appointed to the Michigan Law Revision Commission, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Attorney Advisory Committee, and the Local Rules Committee of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. She held posts on the executive board of the Michigan Judges Association and the Judicial Advisory Board of the Center for Law and Organizational Economics at the University of Kansas Law School. She also served on the board of Boysville of Michigan (now Holy Cross). She is a long time member of the Federalist Society, Michigan Lawyers Chapter, and was president of the Incorporated Society of Irish American Lawyers and the Federal Bar Association, Detroit Chapter.

Justice Corrigan has won numerous awards for her achievements including: the Detroit News Michiganian of the Year Award (2005), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (OCS) Award for significant improvements to Michigan's Child Support Enforcement Program (2002), the Federal Bar Association's Leonard Gilman Award to the Outstanding Practitioner of Criminal Law (1989), and the U.S. Department of Justice Director's Award for Outstanding Performance as an Assistant U.S. Attorney (1985). She holds honorary doctorates from five Michigan colleges and universities: Eastern Michigan University, Michigan State University/Detroit College of Law, Northern Michigan University, University of Detroit-Mercy, and Schoolcraft College. She has been chosen as the Outstanding Alumna of UD-Mercy Law School and Marygrove College. She has coauthored a treatise on civil procedure and has published articles in professional journals and books, including the Wayne Law Review, University of Toledo Law Review, NYU Law Review and the Texas Review of Law and Politics. She has taught as an adjunct professor at Wayne State University Law School and at programs of the Michigan Judicial Institute, the American Bar Association Appellate Practice Institute, the Federal Bar Association, and the U.S. Department of Justice Attorney General's Advocacy Institute.

Justice Corrigan is the widow of Wayne State University Distinguished Professor of Law Joseph D. Grano and is the mother of Daniel, a Wayne State University law student, Megan, a comedian with Second City in Chicago, and the mother-in-law of Michael Canale, business manager of Chicago's Annoyance Theater.

She's the real thing, along with her associates. Michigan, I believe, has one of the best if not the best state supreme court in the country. Here's an example of a ruling:

The Michigan Supreme Court has ruled that local and state governments may not seize private property under their eminent domain power and give it to another private user.

In other words, the local government can’t take your home, land or business and give it to a strip mall, a car dealership, a high-tech company or any other private property owner.

The unanimous ruling on July 30, 2004 returned common sense to private property ownership, reined in political hacks stealing property to reward friends or well-heeled connections and built a clear wall between the legal concepts of private property and public use.

“We overrule Poletown,” the Court wrote, “in order to vindicate our constitution, protect the people’s property rights and preserve the legitimacy of the judicial branch as the expositor, not creator, of fundamental law.”

This statement indicates that Michigan’s highest court has rediscovered its constitutional and traditional role as interpreter of law, not creative writer of law.

(snip)

In the July ruling, the court correctly studied this matter from the view of original intent. In other words, what did the lawmakers originally mean when the law was written?

Justice Robert Young called this seizure of property under Poletown “a radical departure from fundamental constitutional principles.”

The court rejected the argument of local governments that “a private entity’s pursuit of profit was a ‘public use’ for constitutional takings purposes simply because one entity’s profit maximization contributed to the health of the general economy.” Taking private property for the benefit of private investors is wrong.

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